Talk about paying it forward.
Fast food joint Raising Cane’s bought 50,000 Mega Millions lottery tickets for their workers ahead of Tuesday night’s massive drawing — currently the third highest in the game’s history at $810 million.
The idea came from founder and CEO Todd Graves, along with co-CEO AJ Kumaran, who both individually went out and spent hours buying the hopefully lucky stubs, Kumaran told “Fox & Friends.” The CEO vowed that the yield of a winning ticket would be shared “equally amongst” the entire Raising Cane’s team.
“We’ve always believed in staying together as a family, taking care of each other, everything, right? … Things are hard out there, you know, people are seeing it on their grocery shelves and their gas stations,” Kumaran said.
“So when [the] jackpot came to this big, large number, we wanted to do this. Todd said, ‘Man, let’s just do it — let’s do it for every crewmember.’”
The adventure of buying the tickets first began on Friday, but Kumaran confessed they first didn’t account for the logistics that come with buying — and printing out — 50,000 pieces of paper.
“By the time we figured it out it was too late. Now I know it takes about eight hours and lots of pushing the button to get 50,000 tickets printed,” he joked, mentioning they had to take out troves of cash and go to two separate 7-Eleven convenience stores to get the job done.
“Then we’re taking these big bags of money … I’m like, ‘Please, can somebody call [the] cops?’” Kumaran said with a laugh.
But by Monday, Raising Cane’s announced that the only part of the mission left was to hit the winning numbers.
While the Cane’s family has a novel idea, the chances of winning are about one in 303 million, according to Mega Millions.
And although an estimated $810 million — $470.1 million in cash — is prized, a potential jackpot winner will be surrendering about $112.8 million to a mandatory 24% federal tax withholding, CNBC reported.
On the most recent July 22 drawing, four tickets from New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Virginia hit major “second tier” victories for about $3 million each. The Tuesday drawing will be at 11 p.m.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
